​Pollution damaging English economy, public health – experts

Pollution in England is damaging its economy, an independent advisory group has warned, as it urged the government to rethink its attitudes to environmental wellbeing.

The Natural Capital
Committee has warned that population growth will increase
environmental pressures. It said a 25-year plan was needed to
improve air quality and make cities more environmentally
friendly.

The committee also advised creating large spaces for woodlands
and wetlands to protect from extreme weather as well as improving
wellbeing.

“There is now a great opportunity to improve the wellbeing
and prosperity of both urban and rural populations and restore
some of the natural capital that has been lost,” said the
committee’s chairman, Dieter Helm.

“This will enhance prospects for long-term sustainable growth
and therefore bequeath to the next generation a set of properly
maintained and enhanced natural assets.”

The report warns that air pollution can result in up to 40,000
deaths per year, particularly in areas without nearby woodland,
while also warning about the impact of pollution on mental
health.

However, a spokesperson from the Department of Energy, Food and
Rural Affairs (Defra) said the government had invested millions
in curbing environmental decay, and had made sustainability a key
part of its economic agenda.

“Since 2010 we have helped to create over 150,000 acres of
field margins, wetlands and woodlands, and woodland cover is at
its highest level in 700 years,” the spokesperson said.

The report follows statements by Prince Charles urging major
powers to sign a global pact on curbing climate change, warning
that it was the “last chance” to avoid the consequences of global
warming.

“[This is] an absolutely crucial opportunity, if not the last
chance before we end up in an irreversible situation, for the
international community to establish a new set of interlocking,
coherent and ambitious frameworks governing human development,
poverty, disaster risk reduction, the natural environment and
climate change,” he told forestry and climate change experts
at a meeting in London.

“We could, and should, see an agenda set for the coming
decades that is capable of transforming the prospects for
humanity by improving and nurturing the state of the planet upon
which we all depend.”